Flying With Friends I

Null sec malaise has found me again. While I deeply enjoy null sec and I’m probably not going to leave any time soon, sometimes I just need a break from it. When I feel the malaise coming one of two things will happen. Either I’ll go off and play some other fun game for a while or find some friends who are doing something different in game. Last night I did the latter.

One of my new co-hosts, Marc Scaurus of the Tuskers, and his former Ransoms And Roams co-host, Professor Terror of Sinner., took me out for some low sec shenanigans. Our visible fleet composition consisted of two drakes and a talos. Thanks to the wonders of dual boxing we also had a scout and some secret sauce to add some flavor to the night.

The night was pretty quiet according to Marc and Terror and I’m inclined to agree with them on this one. There just wasn’t much legit activity going on in the surrounding areas. We didn’t come across any real roaming fleets or gate camps. Still there was a little bit of action to be had.

My first encounter in the area was with a Incursus off the station that my loaner drake had been deposited in. This would also be my first mistake of the night. Not thinking, I undocked without loading ammo into my guns while in station. When I undocked, the Incursus yellow boxed me as soon as they could in an attempt to bait me into agressing them. When I tried to shoot them... I couldn’t. I couldn’t shoot them because the person that loaned me the drake put Heavy Assault Missiles in the cargo hold instead of Heavy Missiles.... Marc. So unable to shoot, I simply docked back up. Professor Terror did manage to swoop in and make short work of him while I searched for ammo.

My second encounter of the evening was with a gnat of a Jaguar pilot. That’s exactly how he flew, like a gnat. In range for a couple of seconds and as soon as you line up a good hit, he’s off 70K away. We screwed around with him for a little bit, but then the guy that was in the Incursus was back and this time he was in a Iskur! I’m not sure what he was thinking.

While we did end up with the killmail, the fight went on a bit longer than I would have imagined. The three of us shot at him for a good minute and a half or so. I think someone might have been splitting DPS on the Jaguar. Plus we were on a gate, so our drones were dropping pretty fast. I wish I had fraps going because I would have loved to see his transversal.

After that, we did a bit more roaming around trying to find something else to kill. We popped over next door to get more drones and while we were waiting on a gate, an auto piloting Iteron appeared. Marc is so busy on his scout he didn’t even notice. I end up getting the ship webbed and scrammed before I get on comms and alert him there is an industrial ship to shoot.

Obviously the guy is afk. We get his pod and we attempt to hold it for ransom. I open the convo, but when I do Marc tells me the Jaguar is coming back and to just pop the pod. We pop the pod and go chasing after this Jaguar, again. About 10 minutes later, I get a standings notification with this little gem:

Wolf Aus has set their standing to terrible towards you.
nice one slut nice bounty for you and your fagot munching wanker

I have never laughed so hard in my life. I’m not sure why he was so angry. He didn’t have any cargo worth anything. He didn’t have implants in. Plus, if he’s baller enough to go through low sec on auto pilot in...an... iteron... well then you get what you get, Sir. You may suck it. Maybe he had come a bunch of jumps and I sent him back to his starting point. Ouch.

Something surprisingly fun happened. Marc decided to do a little experiment and started tweeting about he , Terror and I roaming around Mara. A few minutes later tweetfleeter @Zievarrenna shows up in local. He’s in a Merlin and Marc asks if he wants to 1v1. So Marc gets a rifter together to 1v1 and I jump in to a reaper to watch. I got it all on fraps, but TL;DR Marc wins. As fun as that was, it wasn’t the best part of the night.

The best part of the night was a fight that resulted in no kill mails. Marc found what was obviously a bait drake in one of the systems. By this time the fleet comp changed to a Drake, Tornado & Talon. He scouted out the rest of the fleet which appeared to be a hurricane and a falcon. We weighted the odds and figured that with out DPS we should be able to get the drake down provided we followed the game plan.

We were going to rush the drake and get him down. As soon as we were locked and shooting the drake we would release drones, but not aggress them to the drake. Instead we were going to wait to the falcon warped in and have the drone aggress that ship since the falcon was going to jam us all out and drones will continue to attack even if you’re jammed.

So everything is going according to plan. We’re pounding this drake down. The DPS is so good that he’s bleeding structure when the hurricane land and he’s half way in to structure by the time the falcon lands. Then something both amazing and horrifying happened. All three of us lost point. The Falcon was able to jam out all three us enough long enough for the drake to warp out. We were in three different races of ship and the falcon was able to reset the entire board. On top of that, an orcale dropped in which was the worst thing that could happen so an emergency GTFO was called.

Evening writing this I get that excited feeling or “pvp rush.” It was just fun. There was no kill mail, but hell yea that was a good fight. We “gf-ed” and all that in local and the drake pilot apparently pooped a little. It was hands down the highlight of the evening.

I think I might stay out in low sec for the rest of the week. It’s a different kind of atmosphere. A different kind of pvp. Plus if a couple of listeners or tweetfleeters come down to play, it would be really cool. Apparently Kirith Kodachi wants to shoot at me. It was nice surprise to have @Zievarrenna come down. Apparently there are others in RvB that want to come play. Party in Mara!

Ciao
Dani♥